Shadows
by stydiaokaybye
Summary: Charlie Rogers was a respected agent of SHIELD. Then a trusted ally to the Avengers. Now she's going back to high school to keep an eye on Peter Parker and make sure he doesn't get into trouble under strict orders not to make contact. But when dangerous weapons begin to surface across New York and Peter refuses to back down, Charlie breaks the rules and starts to fall in love.
1. Prologue

WASHINGTON D.C. 2014

Charlie Rogers sat in the waiting room, her leg anxiously bouncing up and down. She reached for the chain around her neck but the cool feeling of the worn metal didn't calm her nerves, if anything, it made her anxiety worse. She let the chain go and impatiently rubbed her sweaty palms together as she watched the corner she knew he would eventually round. How long could it possibly take? Her mother's Alzheimer's had gotten significantly worse over the past year so if she recognized him, it wouldn't be long before her mind reset and the conversation started over again.

Selma, the on call nurse, cleared her throat. "Charlie baby, relax."

Charlie offered her a half smile. "Sorry." She forced her leg to stop bouncing and stretched her palms out flat on her thighs to keep them from fidgeting. The nursing staff was aware of Charlie's unique situation pertaining to her parents, especially that of her absent father who had not been so by choice. Her mother always assured her that if he had been alive, he would have loved her. To keep her hands busy, she grabbed a pamphlet from the table next to her chair, not actually paying attention what it was about. She opened it and tried to read but the words seemed jumbled or maybe her mind was just preoccupied with the impending meeting. Charlie might be almost seventy years old but she did not look a day older than eighteen and that was one of the hardest things about her life. To watch everyone she loved grow older while she stayed in the same young body that never changed – to watch her mother wither before her eyes and knowing there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Selma cleared her throat again. "He's coming." Charlie put the pamphlet down, wiped her hands on her jeans one last time, and stood right as he rounded the corner. All her air got stuck in her throat and she almost lost her nerve but she tentatively said his name after he'd said goodbye to Selma.

"Captain Rogers?" He stopped, his sharp blue eyes almost pierced through her. "My name is Charlie. Peggy Carter's my mother." The shock was evident on his face, and Charlie could only imagine how strange it was that a young woman claimed to be the daughter of a lady in her nineties.

"I didn't know Peggy had a daughter." If he was confused, and she didn't doubt he was, he didn't show it. His demeanor was calm but his size was intimidating. He had broad shoulders and incredibly muscular arms, his hair was sandy blonde and his eyes strikingly blue, and he had a strong jawline that was clean-shaven.

"I was born not long after World War II ended."

His brows drew together. "You don't look older than eighteen."

Charlie chuckled. "By appearance no. I haven't aged since around then, it's the only thing I got from my father." His confusion had become more obvious as he tried to process the information he had been given, and he slumped into a chair. Charlie took the seat next to him but twisted her body a bit so she could see his face properly.

"My name is Charlotte Rogers." She was sure she heard his breath catch. "I was born on December 11th 1945, my parents are Peggy Carter and Steve Rogers." Charlie reached into her bag and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She held the fragile, yellowy paper out to him and he accepted it. He didn't say a word as he carefully straightened out the fold and came face to face with Charlie's birth certificate, which indicated him as the father.

He finally looked at her. "Peggy was pregnant?"

Charlie nodded. "She found out two weeks after you went into the ice." He handed the birth certificate back to her, and leaned back in his chair.

He ran his palms over his face. "And you're absolutely sure?"

"Tony got paranoid and ran a paternity test. Your blood was in storage." His entire demeanor had changed in a matter of minutes – he went from being self-assured to looking completely defeated and Charlie's sympathy surged.

"I know it's a lot." He chuckled and raised his eyes to meet hers. "Do you want to maybe, uh, go get some coffee or something? You must have a lot of questions."

He smiled for the first time since she'd spoken to him. "I'd like that."

Charlie more or less leaped out of her seat. "Okay! Uh, there's a great coffee stand not far from here if you want to go. Well you just agreed so let's go." He laughed for a moment before he stood and followed her to the elevator.

/

After they'd gotten their coffee, they decided to walk around Memorial Park. It was quiet between them for longer than Charlie would have liked but she didn't want to scare him so she waited for him say something first.

"You look exactly like my mother."

Charlie nearly choked on her coffee. "What?" He pulled a picture out of his wallet, and handed it to Charlie. The edges of the photograph frayed and like her birth certificate, it seemed like it could fall apart at any given moment, so she was careful with it. She studied the black and white photograph of a young woman who did indeed look almost identical to Charlie herself - they had similar pursed lips and narrow nose. She handed it back to him.

"You said Tony knows?"

Charlie nodded. "Most of the Avengers do. I'm not sure about Dr. Banner but Thor definitely doesn't – I don't think anyone wants to confuse that guy more." He chuckled but was quiet for a moment, and for a split second Charlie wondered if he was waiting for her to say something.

Then he nodded, mostly to himself, it seemed. "No one told me."

Charlie tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "I asked them not to." He looked at her with a puzzled expression and that was one of the more endearing things about him: He was an open book that anyone could read. "You had just come out of the ice and I didn't want to overwhelm you any more than you already were."

As they entered the World War II Memorial, her father's shoulders tensed and Charlie's vocal cords tied knots around itself – walking along the pillars and the Freedom Wall in particular reminded her of the broken world she had been born into. Even though she'd never fought a war, she had spoken to more veterans than most, and the stories they told of trials and triumphs were some of her favorites.

They stopped in front of the Freedom Wall, and Charlie heard Steve read the inscription in front of the water aloud but only in a whisper. " _Here we mark the price of freedom_." He glanced down at Charlie who stood several inches shorter than him.

"They talked about you a lot, the Commandos."

He smiled. "They did?"

Charlie returned his smile. "They were my favorite stories growing up. They sounded like magical adventures and I suppose that's why I loved them so much – because I didn't understand they were real and that war wasn't a beautiful thing but ugly and haunting and heartbreaking all wrapped in one."

"It was easier to spot the bad guys then."

Charlie chuckled. "Yeah, the lines have blurred quite a bit since the forties."

They left the Memorial in silence and began to make their way along the reflecting pool towards the Washington Monument. Charlie sipped her coffee. The sudden revelation that he had a daughter could be nothing short of daunting and not knowing what he was thinking was slowly killing her.

"Are those dog tags around your neck?" Charlie was taken aback – of all the questions she'd expected him to ask, that was not even in the top twenty.

She instinctively looked down at them. "They're yours." She slipped the cool chain over her head and offered them to him. He accepted with his free hand and studied them. "Mum took them out of storage the day she found out she was pregnant. She gave them to me when I turned eighteen and I've worn them ever since."

"So you've always known I was your…?" He couldn't finish the sentence so he handed the dog tags back to her. She slipped them back over her head.

"Father? Yes." Charlie hesitated. "I don't expect anything, okay? I don't want you to think that I told you because I want you to take on a role you're not comfortable with or anything like that. I told you because you deserve to know." He took a sip of his coffee and when he removed the cup from his face, he was smiling. He seemed relieved.

"Thank you."

BERLIN 2016

"What time zone is this?" Scott Lang stumbled out of the van in the parking garage, understandably disoriented. Charlie stepped out after him chuckling at Scott's stunned look, as he spotted none other than Captain America. Charlie gave her father a hug and stood beside him. She couldn't keep the smile off her face while Scott tried to get his bearings but made a complete fool of himself – it was kind of sweet.

"… So if you come with us you're a wanted man."

Scott scoffed. "Yeah, well, what else is new?"

Charlie held up a finger to get their attention. "He's not kidding. He's been arrested about a half dozen times and spent a couple years in prison." Scott's expression was confused for a moment but shrugged without saying anything.

Cap smiled. "You got your gear?"

"If by gear, you mean my computers and the comm links, then yes." Charlie looked over her shoulder at Bucky – she had never met him but knew that he'd been the one to pull her father out of the water after S.H.I.E.L.D. collapsed. He'd saved his life and for that, she was grateful.

He averted her gaze. "We should get moving."

Clint nodded. "I got a chopper lined up." A somewhat distorted voice sounded on the overhead speaker system, saying something in German that Charlie couldn't decipher but apparently Bucky could.

"They're evacuating the airport."

Sam tensed up. "Stark."

"Stark?"

Cap was equally as tense. "Suit up." As everyone got dressed in their tactical gear, Charlie set up her computers in the back of the van and prepared the comm links. She hated being in the middle of her friends when it would undoubtedly end in a fight.

Cap was the last to get his comm. "You stay here, okay?"

Charlie nodded with a small smile. "They're all here. Tony, Rhodey, Nat, T'Challa, probably Vision. He wasn't exactly thrilled when Wanda and I left."

"You hacked…"

"Security footage, flight manifestos, etc." Cap chuckled.

Sam cleared his throat. "Time to go, Steve."

Charlie smiled. "Come back to me, okay?" He kissed the top of her head then picked up his shield and disappeared out of the parking garage along with the rest of the team leaving Charlie alone in the back of a van with her computers. A small part of her felt like a hermit and a lunatic at the same time.

To calm her nerves, if only a little, she played with the chain of the dog tags around her neck while she watched the security cameras on the three monitors.

"Underoos!" Tony's voice came through like background noise on the comm. On her monitors, Charlie saw flash of blue and red rip the shield out of Cap's grip and tie his hands together with something she could not discern from the awkward angle and low quality of the footage. The blur landed on a nearby truck. The figure was unfamiliar.

"Who's the new guy?" Sam's voice said. Charlie didn't have time to respond before the person in what looked like skintight spandex started speaking at a million miles per hour.

"Thanks! Well, I could've stuck the landing a little better, it's just the new suit…" Charlie stopped listening the moment he said something about a new suit, knowing that Tony was the one who designed it. She immediately got to work, hacking into first Tony's extremely secure network where he stored all the information on the armors and everything else he had ever built or was working on. It was hard to get in and while she was typing away, trying to get into the spider-kid's suit (the technology was codenamed Spider-Man), the fighting had begun.

After what felt like hours, Charlie managed to get in. "Team Cap, come in." Charlie snickered to herself even though there was nothing funny about the situation. Over the comm link, she could hear the sounds of fighting – metal against metal, friends against friends. The security feeds didn't provide much now that the fighting was scattered all over the hangars.

Sam's voice came through the link, out of breath. "We're a little busy."

"No kidding," Charlie muttered sarcastically. "I hacked into the spider-kid's suit, want me to disable it? Bye-bye spider-webs, I'm just saying."

Her father's voice came through promptly. "Don't."

Charlie groaned. "Way to take the fun out of it. I could try to get into Tony's suit but it'll be difficult, he guards that thing like a hawk."

"No." It was her father's voice again. He and Bucky were running like hell towards the hangar where the jet was located while the rest of the team occupied their friends. They disappeared on the security feed as a tower collapsed on top of them, and for and Charlie held her breath until his voice came through on the comm.

"Charlie?" He sounded somber. Worried.

"Go. I'll catch a ride back with Tony." She held the dog tags and ran her finger over his name.

"He'll lock you up."

Charlie smiled to herself. "He won't. He knew I would choose your side, no matter what, and he feels responsible for me." It was silent for a moment.

Bucky's voice came through. "We have to go."

"Dad, go. Just come back to me."

* * *

 **A/N: So here's the prologue. I hope I haven't overhyped this with all my countdown posts but I hope you like it! Please leave a review and let me know what you think. If you have any questions or want to know more about Charlie, please feel free to ask me on tumblr - you can find me at stydiaokaybye. Thanks for reading!**


	2. Fly On the Wall

UPSTATE NEW YORK, 2016

Charlie Rogers rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and swung her legs over the side of her bed. She sat without moving for second before she stood and went to her dresser to get a sweatshirt to put on. She slipped it over her head, almost knocking over the photograph on her nightstand in the process. She steadied the wobbling frame and smiled looking at the picture inside. It was of Charlie and Steve laughing, completely unaware that Nat had a camera ready to eternalize the moment. Two months had passed since she'd watched him fly off to Siberia in a stolen Quinjet after a fight that had pitted friends and allies against each other. The Avengers had been torn apart that day and most of Charlie's friends had gone underground after escaping the Raft Prison. So far underground that not even she had been able to track them down.

Besides her father, she missed Nat the most. They'd been friends since Nat joined S.H.I.E.L.D. and she'd taught her some basic self-defense in case of emergency and Charlie had taught Nat most of what she knew about computers and algorithms. Charlie also missed her apartment but after everything that happened, she'd decided that the best place to be was Headquarters. Like she'd predicted at the time, Tony didn't let the authorities take her to prison, insisting that she helped Captain America because they were family and not because she disagreed with the Accords. That didn't stop the authorities from subjecting her to extensive tests and exams upon reentering the US but after it was all said and done, it had been determined that she was not enhanced despite her inability to age.

Charlie was completely lost in thought when Vision emerged from a wall.

She groaned. "Vision, we've talked about this. Use the door. I could have been naked!"

"But you are not."

She stood, arms folded across her chest. "No, I'm not. What's up?" Charlie could almost hear the wheels turning inside his head as he processed – he still wasn't too familiar or comfortable with the phrase what's up.

"Mr. Stark wishes to see you in the kitchen." She stifled a groan and shooed Vision out of her room, through the door like a normal person. She headed for the elevator to go to the kitchen on the floor below where Tony was waiting for her.

"We need to teach Vision some boundaries," Charlie said and approached Tony who seemed a tad bit frustrated. The worry lines on his forehead were more prominent than usual and for the first time in a while, it struck her just how much older he looked from when she first met him years ago. "He hovered through my wall again."

He turned his eyes to her, and the worried expression was nothing but a memory. Instead he sported a half-smile that made her think he wanted something. He was a hard one to read because most of the stuff he said was muddled with jokes and immaturity but sometimes little things slipped through. "Coffee?" He held up the freshly brewed pot.

Charlie smiled. "Please." While he got cups from the cabinet, she grabbed the milk out of the fridge. "If you're buttering me up to update the software on all the staff computers, you don't need to. I'm doing that tomorrow. Today's my day off." He poured steaming hot coffee into one of the two mugs and handed it to her with that same half-smile that told Charlie something was coming and she wasn't going to like it. Maybe she was better at reading him than she thought.

"I've enrolled you in Midtown School of Science and Technology. No contact mission, just observing. You start tomorrow." She made sure to keep her expression in neutral folds as she poured milk into her coffee and slipped the carton back in the fridge. She looked him directly in the eye as she took a sip.

"I know you're upset with my dad," Charlie said when Tony's level of comfort seemed to be reasonably low. "But this is a new level of pettiness even for you."

The smile disappeared and his face was back in disinterested folds in no time. "I need someone to keep an eye on the kid."

"You have Happy for that."

After pouring coffee for himself, he gestured for her to join him at the dining table. "I'm trying a more hands on approach."

Charlie snorted. "You're not trying anything," she argued. "You're sending me back to high school to do your dirty work."

He sneezed, a sound that made her laugh even though she'd heard it a million times before. "See? You're even allergic to your own bullshit."

"Very funny." He took another sip of his coffee. "Consider it payback for choosing your father's side."

Charlie looked down, and pretended to be interested in her coffee. "It wasn't easy." She didn't have to explain herself to Tony, and he would never force her to but he liked to poke fun at her for it anyway.

He made a point of loudly slurping his coffee to lighten the mood. "Just do it. Please."

"Fine," Charlie caved. "You should upgrade the kid's suit though, it's way too easy to hack into."

Tony laughed; it was a sound she hadn't heard in what felt like a lifetime. "Duly noted."

She finished the rest of her coffee in two big gulps, and went to put the cup in the sink. "You know I have three high school diplomas already, right? Couple of college degrees, too."

He laughed again as she disappeared out of the kitchen and back to her room on the housing floor of the Avengers Headquarters. Technically it was known as the New Avengers Facility but Headquarters felt more appropriate as it had been the base of the team before the introduction of the Accords.

Back in her room, she took a shower and changed into some comfortable Sunday clothes before settling down at her laptop to do research on the kid. There wasn't much public or accessible information except a couple of articles about the accident that killed his parents leaving him orphaned and to be raised his aunt and uncle. Another article was about a mugging gone wrong that ended in his uncle's death eight months prior, and it seemed to Charlie that Peter Parker attracted tragedy like a magnet. Nothing else seemed to be available to the public, so Charlie started making her way around firewalls to get access to medical records, school files, and other documents that she could not obtain legally.

Turned out he had won trophies upon trophies at science fairs all throughout his childhood which had eventually earned him a spot at the exclusive Midtown School of Science and Technology. He excelled in nearly every class although the guidance counselor and several of his teachers had noted that he had seemed somewhat distracted in recent months. Charlie snorted at the last part – of course he had been distracted. A radioactive spider had bitten the kid and somehow given him superhuman abilities; those teachers would probably have been a little preoccupied too had they been in Peter Parker's shoes.

She closed down the window and opened his medical records but nothing in them stood out. He had broken his arm falling off his bike when he was nine, had a severe reaction to some poison ivy when he was twelve but other than that, Peter Parker appeared to be a normal fifteen year old kid who just happened to be able to climb walls like a goddamn spider. Sometimes Charlie hated how the world had changed and it seemed to become more insane by the minute.

She leaned back in her chair and typed in the passcode for her phone. She began to scroll through her camera roll, smiling at the pictures as they went by on her screen but that same smile faded when the ones from the plane ride back to the US appeared. As if lightning had struck from a clear blue sky, Charlie remembered that Peter had been on that plane with her although he slept and drooled through most of it due to jetlag – it seemed odd to her that there were already pictures on her phone of the boy she was to observe. She chuckled as she zoomed in on his face and the large drool stain on his t-shirt but then her screen lit up with her father's face and her heart swelled to what felt like five times its normal size.

She picked up without greeting him. "So when do I get to see Wakanda?"

"Is this a secure line? Tony's not keeping taps on you?"

She scoffed. "I'd like to see him try." She pictured her father's face and the way his sharp features seemed softer when he looked at her. "And yeah, it's a secure line. I know how to bypass the security and monitoring inside the facility and made sure your phone number was heavily encrypted before I gave it to you."

He clicked his tongue. "Right. Good."

Charlie laughed. "You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

His sigh made the corners of her lips go up. "Not a clue," he admitted, defeat apparent in his voice. "How are you, Charlie?"

"I'm a little annoyed with Tony but that's nothing new."

"What did he do now?" Charlie quickly recapped her conversation with Tony and explained the terms of her upcoming mission. She was not exactly happy when her father agreed that it was a good idea to have someone on site to keep an eye on the kid without interfering with his day-to-day activities. Charlie only felt slightly betrayed but pushed the feeling aside when he started telling her about the wonders of Wakanda and how he wished she was there to see it.

QUEENS, 2016

Charlie's stomach tied knots around itself when she stepped through the doors of her new school the following morning. The hallway stretched out in front of her and was filled to the brim with kids weaving in and out of each other, some stood by their lockers and chatted to each other, others huddled over what looked like a handheld microscope but she couldn't be sure. Her last stint in high school has been in the early nineties and technology wasn't that advanced at the time so Charlie felt like a fish out of water – she had the technology part down being tech and engineering savvy but the science part? Not so much. She wasn't sure she would be able to bullshit her way through chemistry and physics – she'd struggled with it in the sixties but science had evolved a lot since then and there were a million and one things she didn't understand then let alone now. School in the sixties had also been hard due to all the blatant sexism that she was taught not to take because her mother had raised her to believe that men and women are equal. Sexism still played a part in modern education and while some things remained obviously sexist like dress codes, other things were more difficult to spot, which made it a lot harder to call people out on it.

"You must be Charlotte Rogers." Charlie, who had been completely lost in thought and obviously blocking the main entrance, snapped back into reality and looked at the beautiful girl standing in front of her.

She smiled. "Charlie's fine."

The girl nodded. "I'm Liz, I'll be showing you around school. Here's your welcome package," she handed her a thick folder with the school logo on the front page. "Inside you'll find information about clubs, extra curricular activities, volunteering, sports as well as your set class schedule." She gestured for Charlie to follow.

She cleared her throat. "You have a sports team? Isn't this a school for science and technology?"

Liz stopped and turned to face her. "Just because we're a STEM oriented school doesn't mean we don't know how to play basketball."

Charlie shrugged. "Fair point." Liz guided her through the busy hallways and pointed out several key points including the cafeteria, gym, labs and other classrooms all with state of the art equipment, which made her sixties high school look like a junkyard. They went down another hallway and Liz stopped about halfway.

She pointed to a locker with an open padlock. "That's you locker, the combination is in the welcome package. Mine's down the hall towards the bathrooms so if you have any questions, please ask. Welcome to Midtown." The corners of her lips pulled up before she turned and went the same way they'd come. Charlie watched her go, a little taken aback with her kindness – for some reason it wasn't what she had expect. As Liz passed two boys about ten lockers down, she offered a smile and small wave which they returned albeit a bit awkwardly. The one whose locker they were obviously standing at banged his head against the tan steel door and when he turned rest his cheek against it, Charlie instantly recognized him.

Peter Parker held her gaze longer than she expected and when he finally looked away, she made no attempt to keep the smile off her face. She watched him make his way down the hall while his friend chatted gleefully, and she didn't look away until they'd disappeared around the corner. Charlie opened her locker and put the welcome package inside as well as the books she didn't need for her first class. The knot in her stomach tightened but it was different from when she'd walked through the main doors. Instead it felt like her fight or flight instincts had set in as if her body was anticipating trouble before her brain could assess the threat. She tried to shake it off on her way to class but didn't succeed so she welcomed the distraction that was World History with today's emphasis being on enhanced individuals through the ages – her specialty.

* * *

 **A/N: I'm so overwhelmed with the positive response, thank you so much for all your wonderful reviews - warmed my heart to hear that you love Charlie and are excited for Shadows. Enjoy chapter one! Please leave a review and let me know what you think and remember you can find me on tumblr at itscapokaybye!**


	3. New Rules

QUEENS, 2016

"It seems that our new student bears the same name as the First Avenger," the teacher began and Charlie tried to make herself as small as humanly possible. "Any connection, miss Rogers?"

Charlie cleared her throat. "Uh no." Blatant lie. "Not that I know of." The teacher nodded and moved on without as much as blinking in disbelief but that wasn't surprising as Rogers wasn't exactly an uncommon name. Class continued and Charlie did everything in her power not to call the teacher out on mistakes and facts she'd gotten wrong – having been around for most of it meant that Charlie knew when recorded history was wrong such as the fact that Captain America had never married or had children. He was unmarried, sure, but he'd fathered one child with Peggy Carter and Charlie was living, breathing proof that it was true. Not that her teacher needed to know about it.

Throughout class, Charlie kept catching Peter Parker turning around in his seat to look at her. The first couple of times, she thought he'd been looking at something else because there was no way he knew about her or her real identity – Tony had never mentioned her existence to Peter, and she barely looked like Cap but after a while, it became glaringly obvious that she was in fact the one he was looking at. As soon as she caught him staring, he'd avert his gaze immediately and turn back around. For someone with incredible superpowers, subtlety was not his forte. She tried to concentrate on class but Peter's persistent staring made it difficult so when he turned around the eighth or ninth time, she held his gaze and raised an eyebrow at him – he became so flustered that Charlie couldn't help but snort though she tried her best to cover it up as a cough.

When class ended, she let go a sigh of relief. Kids around her scrambled to get their books and bags and head to lunch. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Peter practically sprinting out of there. She furrowed her brows.

"He's weird." The voice came from beside her and Charlie was a little taken aback for a moment. "Peter," she clarified, "I saw him staring." The girl radiated intelligence and despite being a good sixty years her senior though her appearance would never give it away, Charlie was a bit awestruck.

Charlie placed the book into her bag and looked at the girl. "What's his deal?" It couldn't hurt if she asked other students about him and after all, the girl was the one who initiated the conversation.

She shrugged. "Not sure. His uncle died less than a year ago and he's been a little on edge since then, it's gotten worse over the past couple of months." Charlie knew all of this already but still nodded – it wasn't easy to hear and knowing what she did, she felt a slight tinge of pity for Peter.

She smiled. "I'm Charlie." She extended her hand to the girl who took it in a firm grip and shook it once before letting go.

"Michelle." She picked her bag off the desk and nodded a goodbye but Charlie made the quick decision to follow – she couldn't make contact with Peter but Tony didn't say anything about not making friends general and Michelle seemed like the kind of person that could be useful to have on her side.

"Hey," Charlie said and fell in step. "Would you mind showing me the cafeteria? I'm starving." She felt awful that her main intention was to get information from her but right now, that's all that mattered.

Michelle nodded, a reluctant smile playing around her lips. "Sure."

Charlie spent the rest of the school day on autopilot. She went from class to class, paying minimum attention and took notes about Peter's movements although at the end of her last class there wasn't much to report except that he was taller than he appeared in photographs, he was pretty interested in Lego and was going to build the Death Star with his friend, and that he carried is suit with him everywhere he went. During lunch with Michelle and while she was reading a book, Charlie had taken the opportunity to hack into the suit's tracking device so she'd always know where he was. She felt a little bit like a stalker and she decided she would to try to renegotiate the deal with Tony to allow contact – making friends with Peter would be easy, right?

She decided not to dwell on it and focus on the last few minutes of chemistry before school let out for the day. She'd made a point of sitting at a station towards to back to keep an eye on him and she watched him peek into a drawer more than once where he had something cooking. She assumed it was web-fluid and though she didn't know much about chemistry, she knew enough to know that it had to be a complex compound.

Her eyelids kept slipping. Charlie was in desperate need of a good night's sleep or a nap at the very least. She was used to getting up early on weekdays as her mother had always been an early riser and of the opinion that it was best to get the day going but the anticipation of a new field mission, and one in high school at that had left her tossing and turning all night. When the last bell finally rang, she was more than happy to get out of the suffocating building filled to the brim with teen anxiety and get some fresh air. She thought for sure that she was the fastest but managed to see Peter's back as he sprinted out of the classroom – she contemplated running after him but then remembered she was tracking the kid's suit and could simply follow his movements on her phone. Not creepy or stalker-ish at all. She swung the backpack over her shoulder and headed for her locker to drop off her books and once there, she found Michelle waiting for her.

"Hey," she greeted and opened her locker. "What's up?"

Michelle hesitated for a moment. "Do you wanna hang out?"

Charlie was pleasantly surprised. "Sure. You have anything special in mind?"

Michelle smiled. "How about we do some homework? I need help with history."

Charlie was the one who smiled this time around. Michelle definitely had her history down as she had answered questions in class with confidence several times but Charlie didn't mind hanging out with her under the pretense of doing homework. And anyway, how much trouble could Peter Parker possibly get into in one afternoon?

/

The answer was a lot. After she parted ways with Michelle, she pulled her phone out of her pocket to call for a car but instead found half a dozen alerts involving Spider-Man. Most of the alerts were harmless and fairly positive but the most recent one, which had rolled in about an hour earlier, was that of an ATM robbery which ended with the best sandwich joint in Queens being blown to bits. Charlie was going to strangle the kid for blowing up Delmar's – it was a longtime favorite of hers and she had been there opening day causing Delmar himself to become a little suspicious of her never changing looks over the years but he seemed to have brushed it off and never mentioned to her when she stopped by.

Charlie stifled a groan and decided to hail a cab instead of calling for a Stark Car to come get her. Moments later she entered the building where Peter lived with his aunt May and once at their front door, she picked the lock and slipped inside. A few minutes of scouring social media, news reports, and the tracking device she may or may not have put on Peter's phone let her know that he was out having dinner with his aunt, so that way she knew she wouldn't break in while they were in the apartment. After shuffling through some papers and other meaningless stuff in the general area, Charlie went to Peter's untidy bedroom and sat on the desk chair, crossing her legs on the desk and played Candy Crush while she waited for the spider kid to come home.

She didn't have to wait long. She heard them laughing as they walked through the front door and the lights were turned on but Charlie still didn't move. Peter said goodnight to May and came into his room where he stopped dead in his tracks when he spotted her. He didn't say anything for a moment but closed the door behind him.

"So you blew up a sandwich shop. Now what?" Charlie didn't look up from her phone right away but she knew his mouth was hanging wide open.

The sound of the door handle rattling made her lift her gaze but it was just Peter reassuring himself that the door was firmly closed behind him. He looked at her as he shifted his weight from one leg to the other, clearly uncomfortable. "What… I… Huh… Wha-what are you doing here?" The kid was so confused Charlie couldn't help but smile.

She looked back down at her phone. "Asking what you're going to do now that you've blown up a sandwich shop."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Charlie snorted. "Sure you do." She took her feet off the desk where she'd been resting them and rose from the chair, slipping the cell in the back pocket of her jeans. "Wanting to stop crime is commendable but blowing up the best sandwich joint in Queens while you do it is unacceptable."

Peter leaned against the door. "You know?"

She nodded. "I hacked your suit in Berlin." Peter's eyes widened for a second. "It wasn't exactly hard so I told Tony to upgrade it but it seems he hasn't because I hacked it again this morning with ease." He buried his face in his hands and for the first time, Charlie noticed just how muscular he was – it was distracting.

"You know Mr. Stark?"

She cleared her throat and met his eyes. "Work for him, too." She almost extended her hand to him to shake it but realized that it was an old habit that had long since had its time and place. "Charlie Rogers."

Something clicked in his eyes. "You're the new girl at school."

"Nothing escapes your attention, does it?" The words came out more sarcastic than she intended but she hoped Peter didn't take it the wrong way. "I saw you staring at school."

Peter became flustered. "What, no. I wasn't staring. I was… uh… checking to see if you were okay, first day and all. Definitely wasn't staring."

Charlie chuckled, the corners of her lips turned slightly upward. "Subtle." He groaned as he brushed passed Charlie and sat on the bottom bunk. He put his face in his hands once again and Charlie felt a little out of place all of a sudden.

Peter's head shot up from his hands, eyes wide. "You were in Berlin?"

Charlie leaned against the desk, folding her arms across her chest. "Yes."

"So you worked with Captain America."

Charlie nodded, brows furrowed. "I did."

"But you just said you work for Mr. Stark."

"I do." She released a heavy sigh, frustrated that he was asking questions he already knew the answer to. "What are you getting at, kid?"

Peter stood, gesturing wildly as he talked as if his words couldn't quite keep up with his brain. "You worked for Captain America in Berlin yet you're not in prison or a fugitive. You work for Mr. Stark even though you supported Cap in Berlin, that doesn't make sense."

This was exactly what Charlie had feared. "I wasn't put in prison because Tony didn't want me there – he feels responsible for me."

Peter stood and stared at her for a long moment, his brows drawn together in confusion. "Why?"

"Look, kid. It's a long and complicated story that you don't want to hear and frankly, I don't want to tell it. I'm here because I'm supposed to keep an eye on you, make sure you don't get into or cause unnecessary trouble but I'm not exactly allowed to have contact with you so you can't mention me to Tony or Happy or anyone for that matter."

He hesitated for a moment. "I'm not a kid."

"You're fifteen, Peter. That's a kid."

"We're the same age."

Charlie laughed and reached for her backpack on the floor. "Are we?" She opened his window and started to climb out of it but she didn't get far before Peter spoke again.

"What do you mean 'are we?'"

She laughed again. "See you at school tomorrow." Charlie slipped outside and went down the fire escape stairs and disappeared into the night.

* * *

 **A/N: The positive response to Charlie and Shadows has been so unexpected and wonderful and I love that you guys are excited to read the story and find out more about Charlie. Enjoy this chapter! Please remember to leave a review and let me know what you think and don't forget to follow me on tumblr at itscapokaybye!**


	4. Inside Out

**UPSTATE NEW YORK, 2016**

"You came back late last night." Charlie lifted her eyes from her coffee cup and met Tony's gaze. She wasn't in the mood for his overbearing uncle antics – it was too early.

"Are you trying to tell me I have a curfew?"

He smiled, the wrinkles around his eyes becoming noticeable. "No," he finally answered. "How was your first day?"

Charlie shrugged. "Not bad." She hesitated a moment. "High school in the fifties and sixties was a lot less complicated. For me, not for others."

He nodded, understanding what she meant. "Happy will take you this morning."

She took another sip of her coffee. "You know, I could just get a place in the city."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Just no."

Charlie stood. "I can take care of myself, you know," she reminded him. "And living in the city is more practical, and you get to help save the environment by not emitting so much CO2. How about it?" She put her mug in the sink but when she turned to hear Tony's answer, he just stared at her with an unamused glare.

"The dishwasher isn't broken."

Not the answer she had hoped for. "It is, however, full and clean but I don't have time to empty it because I'll be late for school." She paused, "and for that, you only have yourself to blame."

Tony put his mug in the sink next to hers. "Touché." He kissed the top of her head, and let her know that Happy would be waiting for her downstairs in five minutes.

As Charlie made her way to her room to get her backpack, a text from her father ticked in. It was a picture of the vast plains of Wakanda bathed in brilliant, fading sunlight, and a pang of longing washed over her. She had lost count of the times, she'd almost jumped on a plane to go join him there but then her better judgment would kick in, and she put the thought out of her head. For now, it was safer for them not to be together although it did not always feel that way. Her reply was a simple crying emoji and a message letting him know she wished she were there.

 **QUEENS, 2016**

As soon as she stepped foot inside the main doors, Peter was on her like a hawk.

"What did you mean 'are we'? We're the same age." Charlie kept her features neutral and didn't acknowledge that she'd heard him - she liked to see him sweat a little; make him scramble to make sense of her not so subtle hint about her real age. He followed her down the hall, hovering while she rummaged through her locker until she found the book she was looking for.

She closed her locker. "Good morning to you, too, Peter." She turned on her heel and made her way down the hallway toward the tech lab where her first class took place. A class she shared with Peter. She still hadn't looked at him properly.

He followed closely behind. "That's not an answer."

"And that wasn't a polite greeting," Charlie countered. "Manners, kid."

He groaned. "Stop calling me that."

She chuckled as she turned the down the corridor that would lead her to the the tech lab. "Sure, kid." He groaned again but didn't say anything else. That was until Ned, Peter's best friend whom she had done research on the night before, joined them and started asking ridiculous questions about his abilities and how he obtained them. Charlie stopped dead in her tracks in the middle of the doorway to the tech lab; Peter and Ned both bumped into her back. She turned to look at them, not sure what kind of expression her face had contorted into.

"You told Ned?"

Ned glanced from Charlie to Peter. "You told her?"

Guilt washed over Peter's features making him appear younger, like a little boy who actually stole the cookies from the cookie jar. "Yes?"

Ned jumped to his friend's aide. "Technically, he didn't tell me anything."

"Technically, I don't care," she snapped and took a deep breath. "This guy is not going to be able to keep a secret." Ned opened his mouth to object but a pointed stare from Charlie made him close it again. Now was not the time to challenge her and he knew it. There was something authoritative about Charlie that freaked him out but he couldn't put his finger on what exactly that was.

The guilt left Peter's features, instead they became defiant. "We can trust him." Someone pushed past them, grumbling about them blocking the entrance. Charlie rolled her eyes so intensely that it almost physically hurt her eyeballs, then she made a straight line for a seat in the back of the lab, and if the boys had any sense of what was good for them, they would join her there. She dumped her books on the table a little harder than necessary, making all the other kids stare in her direction but she didn't care and was pleased to find Peter and Ned dumping their books next to hers.

Ned asked another stupid question in a voice so unsubtle that if he kept it up, everyone would know Peter's secret identity by lunchtime.

Charlie leaned over. "Shut up, Ned."

He did but managed to sneak in one final comment to Peter, not intended for Charlie's ears. "I think I'm in love." The smile snuck onto her lips involuntarily.

/

"How much does she know?" He asked hours later and took a bite of his sandwich.

Charlie rolled her eyes but didn't say a thing, just sipped her coffee and watched as the two of them chatted away about Spider-Man stuff that they should definitely not be discussing in a crowded school cafeteria.

"Everything, I think" Peter answered and looked across the table at Charlie who simply nodded. "She works for Mr. Stark." She watched as Ned's eyeballs nearly popped out of his head. A sense of pride settled in her stomach but it was mixed with a feeling of guilt and dread that she couldn't quite pinpoint.

"You were in Berlin, too?" The childlike wonder in Ned's dark eyes turned the corners of Charlie's mouth upward but she nodded nonetheless. "You fought Captain America, too?"

As if lightning had struck from a clear blue sky, the uneasy guilt made sense. She knew she'd have to answer the question she dreaded most whenever Berlin or the Sokovia Accords came up and that dread was so palpable, she could hardly breathe.

"Not exactly," she finally said, anticipating Ned's reaction and it came she'd expected it. The childlike wonder had been replaced with shock and a hint of distrust which seemed unlike him even though she'd only known him for a few hours.

"You fought Peter?"

"Not exactly," she repeated.

"I'm confused."

Charlie sighed. "I was on Cap's side," she clarified. "But I didn't fight Peter because I was in a van in the parking garage." Charlie's cheeks grew warm with embarrassment - she might've been in Berlin but she wasn't in the thick of it and she didn't risk her life like the rest of them.

"What were you doing in a van?" Ned's question brought her back to the present day but her heart still ached from the memory of that day, the loss of her mother and the absence of her father still all too fresh her memory though she was determined not to let it show.

She put on a neutral face as she met Ned's eyes and was glad to see that some of the fascination had returned to them. "I'm good with computers."

"How good?" Peter cleared his throat as if she hadn't caught how quick the question came. "How good exactly?"

Charlie smiled, casting her eyes down to the table. "Good enough that I could've made your suit malfunction if Cap had allowed it."

"You can hack Stark tech?"

Charlie took a final sip of her coffee and stood. "I can do a lot more than that." With that, she walked off, leaving the two boys with all their questions and no one to give them the answers. It was only a matter of time before either of them figured out that she was lying about her parentage in class yesterday, and she did not feel like lying to them right now. It brought up memories from when she was a young girl first looking for answers about her father.

/

 _It was the summer of 1955 that Charlie first started having serious questions about her father. The Commandos talked about him but refused to shed any real light on who he was, what kind of man they had fought alongside in the war, and the kind of man her mother had fallen in love with._

" _Mama," she said one day while coloring at the kitchen table. "Can you tell me about Dad?" She looked up at her mother's frozen frame, the sound of the typewriter having completely stopped._

 _Peggy visibly swallowed. "What would you like to know?"_

 _She shrugged._

" _Charlotte," her mother warned. "You know how I feel about shrugging."_

 _She put her red coloring pencil down. "And you know how I feel about being called Charlotte."_

" _It's your name, darling."_

" _So?" She questioned. "Yours is Margaret but you go by Peggy. Why can't I be called Charlie?"_

 _Her mother closed the file she was working on and stood. She crossed the small kitchen and pulled a wooden box out of the back of a drawer. Charlie noticed the way her fingers lingered on the latches of the box before she finally opened it._

" _He was a good man, Charlie." She lifted her eyes from the box and returned to the table. Their eyes met, and hers had a tint of sadness to them and without thinking, Charlie reached up and took her mum's warm hand in hers, giving it a squeeze to thank her. Not just for accepting that she wished to be called Charlie but for finally agreeing to tell her about the man whose DNA floated in her alongside her mother's. Because of Charlie, they were still together somehow even though he was gone._

 _Her mother sat, not at the head of the table in front of her typewriter but next to her daughter so they could look through the photographs together._

" _He's so small in this one," Charlie noted as she picked up one._

 _Peggy smiled. "Yes," she agreed. "He looked like this when I met him, small and frail but kind. Always kind."_

" _So how did he get bigger?" She wondered. "Like in this one?"_

" _He had a procedure."_

" _Can I have one?"_

 _Her mother laughed. "No, you'll grow on your own."_

 _She spotted a metal chain in the bottom of the box and couldn't resist the temptation to pull it out; she recognized it as military dog tags. She felt the cool metal of the tags between her fingers as she ran a fingertip across the inscription of her father's name. She turned her eyes up to her mother and found that they had glazed over with tears but Charlie knew better than to say anything about it - instead she let her mother have a quiet moment of mourning for the man she loved and lost within a short space of time. She might only be nine years old but a part of Charlie knew how hard it must be for her mother to look at her daughter every day, a constant reminder of what she lost and how powerless she had been to stop it from happening. Her father had died a hero but that was little comfort to her mother and Charlie knew that._

 _She leaned her head on her mother's shoulder. "I wish I could have met him."_

 _"Me too, darling."_

* * *

 **AN: Finally time for another chapter of Shadows - I apologize for the extremely long wait but appreciate your continued support and enthusiasm for Charlie and this story. Please do leave a review and let me know what you think. Did you like the flashback? Find me on tumblr at _itscapokaybye_.**


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